Wearable apps are hitting their stride, with some designs even becoming household names. Wearable apps offer freedom of design choice, appeal to broad audiences and include the ability to customize based on the user.
Yet, there are also unique challenges posed by wearable apps that can turn into extremely costly mistakes if not managed correctly. Twelve members of Forbes Technology Council offer their best advice to help developers avoid potentially expensive missteps.
1. Don’t Try To Mimic Your Mobile App
Most wearable devices have significantly small screen sizes compared to smartphones and tablets. So you need to set priorities for the functionality that your app provides. Only add high priority items to your wearable app. Remember, when it comes to smaller screens, less is more. For example, if you have a music streaming app, just show the name of the song. The lyrics writer and music writer can be hidden. - Vikram Joshi, pulsd
2. Consider Lifestyle And Life Events
Believe it or not, I’ve seen companies that have developed wearable technology that have not really thought through what people do on a daily basis, including movement, life events and lifestyle habits, or things like weather, sweat and other factors that impact how the technology may or may not work. - Chalmers Brown, Due
3. Undertake User Testing
Everything needs to be tested by users to see if it’s relevant and easy to use and to see what may go wrong. Many companies skip this step and introduce products that are not what users even want. - Jon Bradshaw, Calendar
4. Focus On Safety And Comfort
With much thought and consideration taken for the functionality of the gadgetry, physical considerations such as wearability for long or extended periods of time might go unchecked, as well as anti-theft measures. Costly acquisitions of wearable technology will be deterred if they cannot be safely used in areas and countries without greater personal risk because of their ostentatious nature. - Arnie Gordon, Arlyn Scales
5. Remember To Design For Individuality
Wearable is an extension of fashion and one’s ability to express their style and creativity. As such, wearable apps need to have sufficient flexibility and customization for the user to add in their special touch. - Winnie Cheng, Io-Tahoe LLC
6. Don’t Cram In Too Many Features
A mistake I see happening often is that companies try to cram the same feature set provided by their mobile or web apps into wearable apps. That’s a big mistake. Companies should focus on the one to two key use cases of their product that provide most value in the wearable use case and implement those well in their wearable apps. - Eric Trabold, Nexkey, Inc.
7. Emulate The Entire Experience In Advance
Wearables are hardware, software and fashion/wearability—three entirely orthogonal domains. Often when working on wearables these three domains are not evaluated together until it’s way too late in the process. As early as possible bring together the software, hardware and fashion components to emulate the full user experience. - Micha Breakstone, Chorus.ai
8. Optimize Processes
You need to ensure that there are no bloatwares that end up consuming too much battery life. One of the major issues of wearable apps as well as mobile users is battery life. And too many apps in the background cause devices to drain within a day. So an app with optimized processes is the need of the hour. - Sachin Deshpande, Qualitas IT Private Limited
9. Enable Seamless Connectivity
Great customer experience is vital to enable easy and reliable connectivity when first linking the hardware device to the mobile app. This user flow needs to be simple and straightforward, especially as it’s a huge component of successful onboarding. This is even more important for potential negative scenarios, including explaining how to reconnect. - Artem Petrov, Reinvently
10. Understand The Common User
Users of these devices are looking for comfortable solutions that provide added value to their life in a simple yet effective manner. Therefore the wearable needs to be an easy and smooth transition into their daily lives and/or for common usage. Having a great product with too many features can actually be a downfall in some of these products; instead, get to the point in a simple manner. - Alexandro Pando, Xyrupt Technologies
11. Design For Accessibility
It’s common to consider different sizes and even different environments, but not everybody thinks about the false assumption that is presuming all your customers will have 10 fingers, 10 toes, two arms and two legs and that all of these parts function at optimal capacity. Consider components, interfaces and design patterns that allow for people across the abilities spectrum to use your product. - David Isaac Murray, Doctor.com
12. Address Privacy Concerns
Many wearable apps are typically designed for utility/functionality and looks but give little if any consideration to security. This is a problem since many wearables are gathering biometric information such as health information (beats per minute, oxygen saturation, activity), movement patterns and so on that are all part of you and can be sensitive and should be protected. - Michael Hoyt, Life Cycle Engineering, Inc.
